A Lifetime of Charm Collecting

Loved your comments. I, too, have collected REAL charms for my bracelets for many years. Do u have a phone number for the company you referred to in your
Article??

I am working on charm bracelet #12. My mom started me on my journey with a gold bracelet at age 13. I lost my husband in March and i needed a project to keep be busy. So, I took my bracelets took photos and then wrote why it found a place on my bracelets. Bracelet #1 was my Moms with her memories, #2 was a gold one she started for me at age 13. 3 to 11 is my journey with my husband Paul. I cried, yelled and laughed a lot as I remembered the time we were together in our travels and got the charm. Now I am on #12 that will be my journey without him, Thru the years I have added a butterfly for someone I have lost. I have over 300 charms and still counting. I wear them as a necklace, i love to hear them speak. I have started charm bracelets for each of my 3 granddaughters and now i have started one for my great granddaughter age 10. She loves to hear my story about the charms. I hope others get the bug. It is so much love and memories in such a little charm. Karen A Bowen

I am working on my 12 charm bracelet. I lost my husband in March and needed a project to keep my mind occupied. My Mom had one and now i have it, she started me on my charm journey with a gold one when i was 13. This project was to take photos and write what each was all about, I laughed, cried and yelled a lot. I have over 350 charms and still going. Bracelet 3 to 11 have been my journey with my husband Paul. I have a butterfly on each for those over the years I have lost. .

This comment is instalment 2 , follows my previous instalment.
….and so, after years of searching sourcing buying paying international postage, assembling individually-bought charms into themed bracelets, I found AmandaJo.
AmandaJo, thankfully, has remained a specialist online store featuring genuine “charms” not “beads.”. charms are the things that are attached by a jump ring and dangle and swing and tinkle against the bracelet and other swinging charms.
Beads are those things threaded on to a snake bracelet. The sudden advent of Pandora into the marketplace and its powerfu advertising managed to convince women the world over that they sell charm bracelets you can design yourself piece by piece. They are selling bead bracelets. Women saw “designed in scandinavia” on the advertising and said They’re made in Denmark you know !" Wrong.
Designed in, and Made in, are two different things. Pandora beads charms and jewellery are made in Thailand, their “charms” come from a factory in the silver district, one main esplanade, with all the factories who make all the copy brands which followed the tsunami of Pandora which everybody just had to have ! Personally the dollar value of silver or mixed "beads, price paid, escapes me, and are produced by the millions, so that nobody ever has an exclusive piece. Pandora is a godsend for husbands and families who can’t think of anything to buy for Wife Mum, birthday xmas, baby birth, etc. Just head to Pandora. It’s taken a lot of business because everybody used to head for Swarovski, and other jewellery chain stores.
Personally, again, Pandora thread-on bracelet beads look like they are designed by children, some of the designs quite ugly and childish, kitschy, lacking “taste” and to be avoided. Whose wrist these days do not see that’s NOT wearing a mass-produced commercially available Pandora or copy of?
My comments are my own, my background art and design, and collector of authentic dangly charms. I do not expect anybody to necessariy agree, but it’s an interesting blog and I thank Amanda Jo’s store for fulfilling charm collectors’ “availability” dreams.

Yes, start a new one.
At one stage I had assembed for myself 7 bracelets, then assembled 15 for cousins, close friends, step-daughters.
Each bracelet has its own theme. Therefore I had to source charms individually, usually with international postage, from around the world.
Vintage was where I began, and worked forward from there.
I also bought a collectors’ edition book of Charm Bracelets owned by various wellknown women around the world.
Charm bracelets and charms began with the gypsy folk, talismans have been around forevr, and Love Tokens began about Queen Victoria times, exchanged during wartime to and from loved ones who risked may never meet again in case of the worse. Sweethearts gave and received them, and these are really prized. Many made from coins simply or grandly engraved with a name, add a gem, a pearl, turquoise, dove, bluebird, all those love tokens which took over the world, now highly collectible.
Therefore I made a Nearest & Dearest with names, engraved coins from long ago with Mother Father, Amy Peter, various, John, bluebird of happiness, love is the key, and sailing ships…that’s just one of mine.
The money I spent on each charm sometimes up to $45 and $60 for that special person, plus international postage. Retailers try to add as much sentimental value as they can to these charms, and it usually works, you want it !
Try to auction them when time to cull the collection…auction houses including ebay and buyers usually offer to bid to the wholesale rate gram-weight of silver at the time, same with gold, unless a prospective buyer happens to want your carefully lovingly expensively assembled one of a kind charm bracelet for self or a gift. It really is a sentiment collection of little iconic mini sculptures which are the appeal more than the resale value in these wonderfu things, it’s a life collection special possession, and I encourage every girl to have one or some !
The book I had showed Wallis Simpson, Lucille Ball, Eliz Taylor and all those wonderful women from th 1910s through the 1950s and 1960s when charm bracelets were the must-have item, see them in the Classic Movies on the wrists of the actresses…pure joy !!
And keep playing with them, they’re meant to be noisy, that’s the whole Charm of Charms !!!
Go, Girls !!